


God with a Thousand Faces

by WitticasterCole



Series: Age of Wolves [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Case Fic, Developing Relationship, Dragons, Folklore, Gay Male Character, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Tricksters, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-24 03:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12004131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitticasterCole/pseuds/WitticasterCole
Summary: A god's throne sits empty. A plague of freak accidents is sweeping the globe. A fox finds herself transformed into a human girl. And Danny Mahealani is pretty sure someone's stalking him.2016 is shaping up to be a weird year.





	God with a Thousand Faces

**Author's Note:**

> I return from the grave with more self-indulgent mythology shit. Big thanks to [peardita](http://archiveofourown.org/users/peardita) for helping me make this thing coherent.

 

In all fairness, the fox doesn't know she's an invasive species.

She never lived in the woods, instead scraping out an existence in streets of Busan. She eventually stalked a rat onto a cargo ship headed for Honolulu, which departed before she had a chance to find her way back out.

By sheer luck, the crew of the ship didn't discover the fox until they arrived in Hawaii. They threw her overboard, but she simply paddled to shore and made a new home on the docks.

On the morning of June 20, 2016, the fox is hunting. Her prey—a rare species of Hawaiian honeycreeper widely believed to be extinct—seems unaware of her presence, instead pecking at ants scurrying across the asphalt.

Elsewhere, the fabric of reality twists and shudders. Invisible threads of power, scattered across the world, gather and twist into a single strand—a strand caught and dragged down to a point at the center of the Pacific.

The fox inches ever closer to her prey, her hind legs bunching up beneath her as she prepares to pounce.

Elsewhere, the strand of power writhes as if trying to escape. Its frantic movements grow faster and faster until, finally, it explodes.

A static crackle in the air is the only warning the fox gets. A shockwave scythes invisibly through the alley, knocking her into a wall. The bird lets out a shriek and flees in a burst of feathers.

Where the fox once lay, there's now a young and extremely confused woman.

Ψ

**Three Weeks Later**

The air conditioning's been out for days.

Lydia Martin's recent promotion to Lead Analyst brought with it a much larger, much nicer office in the Baltimore headquarters of the Institute for the Study of Inscrutable Phenomena. Unfortunately, that office is on the east side of the building; that, plus the lack of climate control, has turned her lovely big windows into a magnifying glass under which she is the sweaty, miserable ant. There's a slowly-rotating fan in the hall outside her door and another pointed out the open window in a desperate attempt to circulate fresh air through the building, although all they're really doing is repeatedly blowing the papers off Lydia's desk.

The heat is making Lydia's computer sluggish, and she fans herself with a manila folder as she waits for the new guy's file to finish loading. "It's Parrish, right?"

"Yeah," replies the baby-faced young man seated on the other side of her desk. He can't seem to figure out what to do with his elbows. "You can call me Jordan, but... nobody does."

The file finally loads, confirming Lydia's suspicions. "Looks like HR has two different dates on file," she says. "They told us you weren't starting until next week."

Parrish loosens his tie, either as a nervous gesture or because his collar is completely soaked with sweat. "Oh."

Lydia's phone rings; when she checks the call display, it comes up as a blocked number. She hits 'ignore' and turns her attention back to Parrish. "We don't even have your workstation set up yet," she explains. "I'll ask Kelly if she can have it ready for tomorrow, but she's kind of... busy."

"With the AC?"

"With everything," Lydia sighs. "We've been having tech problems all week."

Lydia's phone buzzes with a text from the blocked number:

> _Lydia, it's Alex Tsao. Answer the phone._

Lydia puts her phone on silent and places it face-down on the desk.

"Maybe you're cursed," Parrish suggests with a forced chuckle.

"We're not. We checked." Lydia pulls up her email and starts composing a message to HR. "I'm going to request that you still be paid for today, but you might as well go home. With any luck, the air conditioning will be fixed by tomorrow."

The lights flicker; a moment later, the building drops into eerie silence as the power goes out. After a few seconds come the anguished cries of everyone who hadn't saved their work.

"I don't think your luck is very good," Parrish says.

Ψ

Danny only ends up talking to the guy because he looks like Jackson from behind. In his defense, the bar is dark—even by bar standards—and he's had a lot to drink.

"Oh shit," Danny says as soon as the guy turns around. "Sorry. I thought you were a friend of mine."

"I could be," the guy replies. It's not the best line Danny's ever heard, but it's also not the worst. "Hi. I'm Ethan."

"Danny. Hi."

Ethan looks less like Jackson from the front, but Danny still feels entirely justified in his mistake. He's not exactly Danny's type, but guys who are usually turn out to be desperately straight.

The silence between them has stretched on a little too long now, so Danny blurts out, "You here on vacation?"

It's a dumb question—Ethan's a fratboy type in a Hawaiian beach town in the middle of summer, there's a 90% chance he's here on vacation—but Ethan, to his credit, simply shrugs and says, "Kind of. You?"

"Thanks for not assuming I work here," Danny replies with a wry grin. It's happened before. "I'm here for the summer. Staying at my mom's place." He pauses, then adds, "She's not there, though. That would be... pathetic."

Ethan seems confused, cocking his head to the side. "How so?"

"Uh." Danny suspects he's said something insulting, but isn't sure how.

After a moment, Ethan laughs. "Dude, relax. I'm not gonna kill you for bad flirting."

"I swear I used to be good at this," Danny grumbles.

"I believe you." Ethan sidles a little closer. "So this friend of yours."

"What about him?"

"How pissed is he gonna be if you come home with me instead?"

Of course, that's the moment someone taps on his shoulder.

Danny turns to see a girl standing uncomfortably close. A girl dressed like she went dumpster-diving behind a Forever 21, who's studying Danny's face like it's a piece of buggy code.

"Hi," she says. "Do I know you?"

"No," Danny replies, and turns back around.

Ethan is gone. Typical.

The girl circles back into Danny's field of view. "I feel like I know you."

"Trust me," Danny says. "You don't."

"Are you sure?" the girl asks. "My name's Kira. Maybe that helps?"

A hand lands on the girl's shoulder, gripping tightly.

"Trust me, sweetheart," Jackson says. "You're barking up the wrong tree. Get lost."

"But—"

Jackson gives her enough of a shove to send her stumbling back into the crowd. She disappears among the other bodies moving through the bar.

"That was mean," Danny points out, trying to keep his mother's scolding tone out of his voice. He used that tone on Jackson once when they were twelve and Jackson didn't talk to him for a week.

"Not everyone takes your passive-aggressive hints," Jackson replies. "This place kind of sucks. Can we go somewhere better?"

Ψ

The section of Institute headquarters unofficially referred to as the 'analyst pit' is a huge, open-plan room in the basement with twenty workstations and no windows. Kelly has the air conditioning back up and running by the time Parrish gets in, but the power surge burned out half the fluorescent lights hanging from the room's vaulted ceiling. Lydia parks Parrish at his new desk and starts talking him through the basics, a process only complicated by the woman on a stepladder swapping out fluorescent bulbs and swearing in Japanese directly behind them.

"The feed pulls in every news story, police report, and social media post from your assigned area," Lydia explains, raising her voice occasionally to be heard over Kelly's grumbling. "We have algorithms to filter some of it, but that still brings in a lot of false positives. Your job is to go through the data and flag anything that might be relevant to the Institute's interests."

Parrish looks perplexed. "That's it?"

"It's an entry level job, Parrish. I know it's boring, but—"

"No, no, boring is fine," Parrish interrupts. He blinks, and for a moment he's somewhere else. "Boring is... great."

Lydia pretends not to notice. Everything about Parrish's resume suggests 'career soldier,' which makes his choice to resign his commission and take a low-paying analyst job an... interesting one. "At the moment," she says instead, "we're particularly looking for reports of freak accidents and weird disasters."

"Seem to be a lot more of those this summer," Parrish remarks.

"Exactly. We're trying to figure out if there's a particular cause, but we need more data. Which is where you come in."

Lydia's phone rings; it's Alex Tsao again. She ignores the call and pockets her phone.

"Uh, ma'am—" Parrish starts.

"Oh god," Lydia groans. "Don't call me 'ma'am.' I'm twenty-seven."

"You're only twenty-seven?"

"What was your question, Parrish?"

"Right." Parrish clears his throat. "If you don't mind me asking, why do you keep making that face at your phone?"

"It's a long story," Lydia replies. "But if an information broker named Alex Tsao calls you, hang up. She wants something and it's probably better for everyone if she doesn't—"

There's a string of profanity from behind her, accompanied by the sound of a chain stressed past its breaking point.

Lydia doesn't see the light fixture fall, only comprehends it as a blur of motion. An arm wraps around her waist and yanks her out of the way; the light misses her by inches as it swings past and smashes into Parrish's desk.

"Holy shit!" Kelly yelps. "Are you okay?"

The light fixture dangles by one chain, the other hanging loose. Lydia has to crane her neck to see it, on account of the fact that Parrish still has his arm around her waist.

"Parrish," she says in a firm voice. "You can let go now."

Parrish's arms snap to his sides as he takes a huge step back. "Sorry, ma'am—uh. Lydia."

Ψ

"Good morning, sunshine."

Danny groans and pulls the covers up over his head. His brain is three sizes too big for his skull and the inside of his mouth is coated with something unspeakable. He can feel Jackson sitting on the edge of the bed and only imagine the smug look on his dumb beautiful face.

Jackson hasn't gotten a hangover in years, which has made Danny contemplate murdering him more than once.

It's possible Jackson can tell how much Danny hates him at the moment, because he says, "I brought coffee."

Danny tosses the covers aside and makes feeble grabbing gestures at the mug in Jackson's hands. Three years of CompSci have left him with a debilitating caffeine addiction and the resting heart rate of a rabbit on amphetamines. Jackson hands over the coffee, which Danny immediately chugs.

"Thanks," Danny says upon coming up for air. "You get to live. For now."

"I'm gonna suggest we party slightly less hard tonight," Jackson replies. "Thoughts?"

"Ugh." The thought of a quiet night in with nothing to distract him from his ongoing existential crisis isn't all that appealing, but at least Jackson won't expect him to talk about his feelings.

"There's more coffee in the kitchen, but you have to get it yourself," Jackson adds, and promptly exits the room.

" _Ugh._ "

Danny drags himself out of bed and lurches toward the kitchen and the tantalizing smell of coffee, dodging postmodern furniture as he goes. His mother's house is out in the southeastern fringes of Kailua, not far from the airfield. It was built in the 50s and bought by Danny's great-grandfather shortly afterward; its value has skyrocketed since then, but Danny's mother refuses to sell the place. Danny's not exactly complaining, considering how he's been staying here rent-free for the past few weeks.

He finally reaches the kitchen, where Jackson is leaning against the table and eating Captain Crunch directly from the box. As Danny reaches for the French press on the stove, his phone—charging on the counter—starts to ring.

It's his mom. He is in no condition to talk to his mom right now.

Danny paws weakly at the screen in an attempt to silence the call. The universe must really hate him today, because he winds up answering it instead.

_"Danny?"_

Danny sighs and picks up the phone. "Hi, Mom."

There's a patter of footsteps and a faint _whoosh_ as Jackson flees the room.

_"Did you just wake up?"_ Danny's mom asks. _"It's one in the afternoon."_

"I'm on vacation, Mom."

_"Okay, fine, you're twenty-one. You can make your own decisions."_ The faint persistent _click-clack_ of a keyboard can be heard in the background, which suggests his mother has elected to multitask during this conversation. _"Have you been to the aviation museum yet?"_

"Not yet."

_"You should. It might help you connect with your great-granddad."_

"I'll try to make it out there," Danny says, because it's easier than asking how a bunch of old planes are supposed to help him bond with a guy who died before he was born.

_"Good. What classes have you picked for the new semester?"_

"I... haven't," Danny admits. "The deadline's not until next month."

_"Yes, but you don't want all the interesting classes to be full by the time you—"_

"I don't even know if I'm going back," he blurts out.

There's a silence so long and profound that Danny starts to hope the call's been dropped.

_"What?"_

"Jackson needs to tell me something," Danny lies. "I'll call you back. Bye!"

_"Daniel—"_

Danny ends the call and, for good measure, turns his phone off.

"So," Jackson says from the doorway. "That went well."

"Shut up."

Ψ

Lydia gets another call from Alex Tsao as she pulls into the parking garage under her apartment building. At least, she assumes it's from Alex; very few people have both the influence and inclination to make their caller ID display as 'ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE.' She ignores the call anyway.

The garage reeks of gasoline and something else, something unfamiliar. It's an acrid, burning scent that sticks to the back of Lydia's throat; she wrinkles her nose as she exits her car and heads for the elevator.

The lights flicker briefly as Lydia reaches out to call the elevator. The moment her finger touches the button, a spark jumps from the panel to her hand. Lydia hisses in a breath and pulls her hand away.

From behind the elevator doors comes a rushing, scraping sound that gets louder every passing second. The doors open, revealing the empty elevator shaft a half-second before the elevator itself crashes to the ground hard enough to make the floor shake.

Lydia stifles a scream and stumbles back as the lights go out.

Her right hand goes for her gun, holstered at her hip; her left digs around in her purse for her flashlight. There's a rustling noise in the dark, accompanied by a growl.

Lydia's hand finds the shape of the flashlight; she pulls it from her purse and switches it on just in time to spot a dark shape darting away. She turns, scanning the hall.

Something exhales right next to her ear, and the flashlight dies.

Lydia spins, bringing her gun up, but a shove to her chest puts he off-balance and knocks her to the ground. The thing in the dark lets out a high-pitched, giggling snarl—

—one that's interrupted by a yelp and a rush of displaced air.

There's a flash, almost like a burst of lightning, illuminating the shape of a shadowy creature. It struggles, trapped by the hands around its throat, and lets out a scream quickly drowned out as a thunderclap tears through the hall.

The lights come back on, revealing the presence of a petite, boyish woman in jeans and a hoodie. There's a scorch mark on the floor in front of her, vaguely shaped like a fox.

"Alex," Lydia says, with more relief than she'd like.

Alex Tsao puts her hands on her hips and glares down at Lydia. "You see what happens when you screen my calls?"

Ψ

Alex takes her coffee black, with enough sugar to turn it into a viscous sludge. Lydia always assumed that dragons had more refined taste, but Alex has a habit of defying her expectations in the most unsettling ways.

"What was it?" Lydia asks, settling into an armchair across from where Alex has perched herself on the couch.

"A huli jing," Alex replies, stirring her coffee. "A malevolent fox spirit."

"I've never seen one before."

"You wouldn't have." Alex sips her coffee and seems satisfied. "They don't exist."

Lydia takes a moment to process that. "I'm going to need some clarification."

Alex nods and slams half the coffee in one go. "All right. How much do you know about the Crossroads God?"

"Bits and pieces," Lydia says carefully. "It's some kind of gestalt, right? A hive mind of every trickster spirit on earth?"

"Not quite." Alex pauses, gathering her thoughts. "It's—he's—one being, one soul, but with a thousand different aspects."

"And they all exist at the same time."

"It's... hard to explain to a mortal," Alex continues. "Even among my kind, the Crossroads God is a bit of a mystery. He might be the most powerful being on earth. He also happens to be a friend of mine."

Lydia rubs her eyes; her eye makeup is long gone and she's past caring anyway. "What does this have to do with the thing in the garage?"

"I'm getting to that," Alex says. "The thing is, the Crossroads God is... gone."

"What do you mean, 'gone'? Like, missing?"

"I mean gone," Alex snaps. "And now, instead, there are all these... little tricksters. Like the huli jing."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Look, the reason the Crossroads God is so powerful is because all of us, on some level, believe in him. We all tell stories about him, in one form or another, and that's what makes him what he is. But now that he's gone, something else has to exist to fill the space."

"So now the world's flooded with trickster spirits?" Lydia can't help but think back over the last few weeks. "Actually, that kind of makes sense."

"Oh, so you've noticed too."

"And I'm guessing you're not here just to tell me the Crossroads God's gone AWOL," Lydia says, wary.

"Not exactly," Alex replies. "I want you to help me find him. And, if possible, I want you to help me bring him back."

Ψ

"So are you ever gonna call your mom back?"

If Danny were given a choice as to when he'd like to have this conversation, he'd pick 'never.' Failing that, he'd prefer not to have it in a convenience store at 9 PM. But that's what's happening, apparently.

"We've been best friends since kindergarten," Danny says gravely. "I can't believe you'd betray me like this."

"Oh no, someone gives a shit about your emotional well-being," Jackson fires back with the kind of bone-dry sarcasm that forms the basis of their entire friendship. "What a nightmare."

"I brought you here specifically because you hate talking about feelings and shit."

"And yet you've forced me to do so. This is a hell of your own making."

Danny rolls his eyes and turns to glare at the store's selection of beef jerky. It's not very good.

"Listen," Jackson says. "Obviously your mid-midlife crisis has some upsides, specifically for me, because I get a free vacation out of the deal. But avoiding your mom is just gonna bite you in the ass later."

"I know."

"And you don't have to explain this whole school thing to me, but you should probably explain it to her."

"I _know_."

The store's speakers are pumping out a tinny, distorted version of Toto's 'Africa,' which makes this whole experience that much more depressing. Danny gives up on the beef jerky and heads for the till.

"Are you worried about how she'll react?" Jackson asks as the cashier rings up the frankly appalling amount of junk food on the counter. "Because if Sarah hasn't disowned you for being friends with me, I don't think she ever will."

"She doesn't actually hate you that much."

"So you concede that she _does_ hate me a little bit."

Rather than answer, Danny slaps a $20 bill on the counter and makes his escape with all the snacks.

It's a twenty minute walk back to the house along a road that's long overdue for maintenance, but the hike helps Danny sort out his thoughts. Unfortunately, something else draws his attention along the way.

"Jackson?"

"Yeah?"

"Is that van following us?"

Jackson glances over his shoulder at the black van creeping along the road behind them. "... I think so, yeah."

"Shit."

There's a hill on one side of the road and an ocean on the other. There's nowhere to go but forward.

"What do we do?" Danny whispers. "Do we run?"

"There's no way you can outrun a van," Jackson points out.

"There's no way _either_ of us can outrun a van."

Jackson looks like he's about to argue, but the van derails that train of thought by speeding up and roaring past them. It turns sideways and screeches to a halt a few yards up the road, blocking their path.

The van's door slides open, and two guys in black tactical gear jump out. Jackson steps forward, shoving Danny behind him, but the guys have guns.

What follows is the loudest noise Danny has ever heard. Jackson drops to the ground with two bloody holes in his chest.

Danny's brain stumbles over itself. This has to be a prank. This has to be a mistake. This isn't happening. This _doesn't_ happen. Should he scream? Is anyone close enough to hear? Oh god, oh god, _Jackson_ —

The men with guns advance, stepping over Jackson's body. Neither of them notice as Jackson staggers to his feet behind them.

They definitely don't notice that his eyes are glowing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Next: "Escalation"


End file.
